Ah, the romantic life of a writer. The studio apartment with a mattress lying on the floor; the stack of rejection letters; the refrigerator stuffed with two beer bottles and ketchup packets filched from McDonald's.

But not Devin Wolf; a writer of erotic fiction (as opposed to porno hack), he has a swanky pad, decorated with wall-to-wall Vivid slicks and posters, natch, he has women phoning him out of nowhere for phone sex.

The kinky calls lead to an obsessive stalker (Jessica Drake) who plays games that Wolf's mom never taught him, such as fucking him in a bathroom stall and leaving Wolf handcuffed and buck naked (without a hint of irony, he pleads with Drake saying, "Take these off, this isn't funny.").

In the meantime, Wolf is infatuated with lingerie model Kira Kenner, but unlike most situations involving women who parade around in underwear for a living, he actually gets somewhere with her.

For couples, the sex is just right, with nothing to make them squirm. The final group gropes set in a fetish club, for instance, are hot, but not too raunchy so as to send the squeamish running for the hills.

While many of the great Paul Thomas' other directorial efforts (including Justine and Bobby Sox, both of which won him Best Director awards in, respectively, 1993 and 1996) feature strong scripts, the storyline in Obsession never completely gets off the ground. Kenner's character is developed as much as the mannequin she imitates in a storefront and Wolf's role as the tender writer looking to stay true to his art isn't anything consumers of carnal couples cinema haven't seen before. Drake's portrayal of a compulsive is fairly convincing, but is weakened because her motivations are never adequately explained and take away from the believability of her character.